Airbnb to challenge Rightmove and Zoopla with move into long-term rentals

The beleaguered travel start-up is pushing its hosts and guests towards longer-term lets to salvage what income it can from the pandemic

Airbnb has signalled an intention to challenge listings sites such as Rightmove and Zoopla for the traditional letting market as it races to rescue its business from the global travel shutdown.

The embattled holiday rental company said that it would start pushing its hosts and guests towards stays lasting more than one month, which have risen even as other bookings collapse.

The move is likely intended to prevent its hosts from defecting to the long-term rental markets en masse in order to salvage their income and avoid defaulting on their mortgages.

Analysis by the estate agent Savills suggests that London's Airbnb hosts are rapidly converting their property into long-term lets, while Airbnb itself reportedly expects more than half of its income for this year to be wiped out.

Even so, the San-Francisco-based start-up struck a cocksure tone, claiming that it planned to disrupt mid-to-long-term rental just as it has disrupted the hotel and holiday industry, 

A spokesman said: "Before Airbnb existed, short-term rentals were found on a patchwork of local websites. Airbnb changed the short-term rental market and now the longer-term stays market is ripe for a makeover. 

"We think Airbnb can change that and give people a better experience with options that feel more like home."

He said that Airbnb would now reserve part of its front page for stays of more than one month, "often with discounted pricing", having already given its hosts new tools to manage such listings earlier this week.

According to data from AirDNA, an independent analytics firm, the average length of an Airbnb booking has shot up from four days, where it had lingered for years, to around 14 days, in part due to city-dwellers seeking countryside boltholes. 

Airbnb itself, which has reportedly slashed its valuation from $36bn (£29bn) to only $18bn, insisted that long-term rentals had been rising on its service since long before the pandemic, with the longest ever lasting almost three years. 

But Ulrik Binzer, a consultant who helps local governments draft short-term letting regulations, described the company's announcement as a "defensive move" designed to head off a potentially permanent reduction in its available housing supply. 

He said: "Their big fear is that all of their professional hosts are essentially going to become insolvent and sell their properties. And then there won't be buyers who are willing to take over that business model, given what's happened.

"Better to keep them in the system and help your stakeholders than leave them hanging. The platform they have is perfectly suitable for long-term rental."

Scott Shatford, AirDNA's chief executive, characterised it as a "life raft" to hosts, intended to jolt them into abandoning their preference for more lucrative short stays while signalling to guests that longer ones were available.

"[Hosts] can earn two to three times more on the short-term market, but if you need to backpedal in survival mode, then covering costs will do.

"People are still trying to figure out where to bunker down for two months and ride out the crisis. That has been the only silver lining... but it definitely doesn't completely compensate for all the short term leisure activity disintegrating."

He added that longer lets could also allow hosts to escape the spate of regulations imposed by cities around the world over the last two years.

While London defines a "short-term let" as lasting less than 90 days, many cities, including Paris, Rome and Los Angeles, define it as less than 30 days.